I have a love/hate relationship with supporting white people in doing anti-racism work. And quite frankly have the same relationship with my own journey to address how internalized white supremacy lives in me.

The pernicious nature of internalized white supremacy means I’m constantly at risk of remaining the problem by denying how it lives in me, and that is exactly what white supremacy wants of us as white people. The solution is that white people must commit to learn how to stop feeding the monster. And, that being part of the solution takes life-long intentional practice in every face-to-face meeting, at the gym, and grocery store, every FB post or response.

Most racially conscious people I know - both white and people of color – acknowledge and we often talk with each other about how hard it is to work with white people who are less conscious. The interdependent nuanced and complex four themes that we talk about remain constant.

How stuck white people remain in our defensive insistence that we are good people, and how we never meant to be racist, and our refusal to see that doesn’t translate into the solution which is to take responsibility for our racist beliefs in behavior, attitude, word and action. So, we remain stuck, and continue to be the problem, instead part of the solution.

White racial collusion which is the nuanced way in which white groups maintain norms of membership who’s in and who’s out, and what’s appropriate and what’s not. Who are the “right people,” “real” players. It involves acts driven by our conscious and unconscious need to maintain or gain group power. White collusion manifests in those moments when we as white people are privately determining the level of risk we will take in going against white cultural norms in order to keep the privilege of membership; fit in, be liked, or avoid being the target of attention.

White people’s anger toward the person who dares to name how white supremacy is playing out daily within us and around us when we witness it – instead of holding the person who committed the racist act accountable. Unless we white ppl fully accept that we have been indoctrinated by white supremacy and start being part of the solution by noticing how we are unintentionally being racist so that we can stop this behavior, we are going to remain part of the problem, and it is going to show up daily in all our interactions.

The phenome of “white fragility” the state of mind in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable in us and triggers a range of defensive reactions. Instead of embracing feedback, calling each other into accountability, white ppl shoot the messenger, and revert back to what white supremacy has taught us so well, we become reactive.

These reactions include the external display of emotions such as anger, fear and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, shaming, social ghosting, and/or taking ourselves out of the stress-inducing situation.

Logged

Stop looking at the light. Instead, look at what is being illuminated by the light.

Did you know Ronald Reagan declared its a new day and we’re in a post racial society?Did you know one of the talking points used by racists is with the election of president Obama we’re in a post racial society?With the repeated attacks on black people doing nothing but trying to live normal lives, may I rightly conclude a lot of white people didn’t get the memo?I can attest to the fact black people have no knowledge about this so called post racial society. Is this what it’s supposed to look like?